Box Office: ‘Ride Along 2,’ ‘The Revenant’ Push ‘Star Wars’ From First Place

After four weeks atop box office charts, Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has ceded first place to Universal’s “Ride Along 2.” The comedy sequel picked up a commanding $34 million across 3,175 venues and $39.5 million over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend. The space opera slid to third place with $25.1 million for the three days and roughly $30 million for the four-day period. It has earned $851 million Stateside to become the highest-grossing domestic release in history, and $1.86 billion globally.

Universal spent $40 million re-teaming Ice Cube and Kevin Hart for “Ride Along 2,” which finds the bickering police officers working to bring a Miami drug ring to justice. The audience skewed slightly more female, with women making up 52% of the opening weekend audience. African-Americans and Hispanics were the biggest demographic sector, each representing 34% of the crowd. The rest of “Ride Along 2” viewers were 22% Caucasian, 5% Asian, and 5% were “other.”

“It’s a very funny movie,” said Nick Carpou, Universal’s domestic distribution chief. “We have a very committed group of filmmakers and our cast has been promoting the heck out of it.”

The “Ride Along” follow-up premiered on the same weekend as the first film, but did fall short of its debut. The first picture brought in $41.5 million for the three days and $48.6 million over the longer holiday period when it kicked off in 2014.

Fox’s “The Revenant” was bolstered by its strong showing at the Oscar nominations on Thursday when the wilderness epic picked up a leading 12 nods, including ones for Best Picture and for the performances of stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.

“This is the movie that has the awards momentum,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak. “The Oscar attention is taking it to the next level.”

The story of a fur trapper seeking revenge racked up $29.5 million over the three days. Its domestic total stands at $87.7 million and “The Revenant” should pull in $34 million over the holiday. New Regency financed the ambitious film, which battled production delays, crew defections, and a budget that ballooned from $90 million to $135 million, to emerge as an awards season winner.

Paramount’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” flirted with political controversy, drawing a rebuke from a CIA spokesman. While enraging liberal critics, it managed to pull off a $16 million opening over the three days. The $50 million production will do an estimated $19 million over the holiday.

“13 Hours” screened at 2,389 locations. The 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya resulted in the killing of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Opponents of the Obama administration have faulted the president’s team for its response to the attack and for not being forthcoming about warnings it received that the compound might have been in danger. Given the divisive nature of the subject matter, it’s unsurprising that the picture did much better in the South and in red states, where it over-performed more liberal areas by 25%. Those who saw it, liked it, handing it an A CinemaScore.

“We feel it’s going to continue to be a topic of conversation and debate,” said Rob Moore, Paramount’s vice-chairman. “We think it will be a movie that’s going to be around for awhile.”

Lionsgate’s “Norm Of The North” pulled in $6.7 million from 2,411 locations. The animated film about a polar bear who is displaced from his Arctic home and makes his way to New York City, should do $8.8 million worth of business over the four-day span.

“The Revenant” wasn’t the only Oscar nominee to enjoy a bump. Fox Searchlight’s “Brooklyn” saw its receipts climb 51% to $2 million from 687 theaters, bringing its total to $25 million. Fellow Best Picture nominee “Room” saw its revenue spike up over 500%, topping out at $893,357 for the weekend from 293 locations. The A24 release has earned $6.2 million.

Didn’t see wouldn’t see the first one or this number two and believe me it’s number one and two if
you know what I mean? more crap and piss from Hollyweird! goes to show how dumb the public is
still paying to see garbage like this not only once but twice? I guess Obomba was the first clue how
dumb the American public can be and fooled into going to a disaster twice after the first disaster.

We feel it’s going to continue to be a topic of conversation and debate,” said Rob Moore, Paramount’s vice-chairman. “We think it will be a movie that’s going to be around for awhile.”

I think by tomorrow morning it’ll be forgotten. It’s what they were hoping for but as proven by the audience demographics, only the Fox News Crowd is interested. And they’re dying off and don’t go to the movies often enough to sustain anything.

Ride Along 2 gets benefit from saturated market. It is the time when all of news about movies are about awards-material, films that are considered as serious movies. Kind of “counter-programming”.

The Revenant may be benefited from its recent 12 Oscar noms, but Innaritu’s movie is not a movie for audiences to have escapism. Despite become a good artistic product (and I Love it), Revenant is gloomy, somehow depressing and boring. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are surely the magnet for audiences to watch Revenant.

I think, Force Awakens will still be at number two next week. Until, there’s new movie. People now is a little bit tired with the overwhelming coverage of Force Awakens.

With the awakening and rising of social media and smartphone technology, the screen-culture has changed, too.

So, RIDE ALONG 2 officially becomes that $2000 double JEOPARDY answer to the question about what movie finally ended STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS streak as the number one movie in America. Congrats to them and the other 4 movies in double digits for the three day weekend,: Revenant 29m, SW: TFA 25m, and Daddy’s Home 9.8m ( close enough and I believe it will adjust up after Sunday matinee numbers come in), which either way should hit the low teens by the end of Monday, (13.4m), which will put it well over double digits for a 4th straight weekend.
The shock of the weekend has to be the DOA, Norm of the North, which kids and parents ignored and rejected. Had that one pegged for at least $15 million from the parents bringing kids to the movie demographic, but it failed to make any kind of substantial dent into that market. Oh well, at least the Oscar contenders got a lot of love this weekend. Brad Pitt’s, THE BIG SHORT, continues to hold nearly its entire audience count fay after day, week after week. Last week saw a puny 11% drop and this week’s drop is only 15%. And actually by the end of MLK day tomorrow, it will finish the 4 day weekend on the plus side of last weekend’s total, probably close to or slightly more than $7 million.

What is with all these homosexual white men running around from movie entertainment website to movie entertainment website fretting over racism in the Oscar nominations? LOL. It’s pathetic. Don’t these fools ever get tired of punking out? I read many articles in which reporters coerced black actors, directors, producers, etc. into denigrating the all white Oscar nominations and they have obliged. This leads to a comments section flooded by little girlish white men having hissy fits about how stupid black people are, etc. etc., but the thing is you don’t see any black people on these blogs being a bit worried about the all white Oscars. Maybe, you can find one comment, here or there with a reasonable response to a racist comment from the usual suspects, but 99% of the people worried about the Oscars are punkish white boys. Sad. It’s just a constant stream of white boys flipping out, with each other, on something that’s a non-issue with blacks. Check any movie website blog and see who the people are making the idiotic comments. If there was an emoji for triple punk faces, I’d put that at the end of my comment for sick white boys like “Michael Anthony.”

This movie won’t win any Oscars but any of the racist backers and promoters who profit from its success certainly will not have a problem sucking up all those delicious millions of dollars it makes. Hollywood disingenuousness at its finest.

How can you say such drivel? You know nothing about who financed the movie, nor do you know if it’s inaccurate…nobody knows as our government has not been forthcoming as to the details of what happened. Personally, i think this kind of work is great coming from Hollywood. I would encourage you to take a very close look at the level of corruption in our leadership. You seem to be glossing over a lot.